Ziska eBook

chance word or sentence he could hear, whether it
concerned himself or not. He had peculiar theories,
and one of them was, as he would tell you, that if
you overheard a remark apparently not intended for
you, you were to make yourself quite easy, as it was
“a point of predestination” that you should
at that particular moment, consciously or unconsciously,
play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would,
he always averred, be explained to you later on in
your career. The well-known saying “listeners
never hear any good of themselves” was, he declared,
a most ridiculous aphorism. “You overhear
persons talking and you listen. Very well.
It may chance that you hear yourself abused.
What then? Nothing can be so good for you as
such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns
you against foes whom you have perhaps considered friends,
and it tones down any overweening conceit you may
have had concerning your own importance or ability.
Listen to everything if you are wise—­I
always do. I am an old and practised listener.
And I have never listened in vain. All the information
I have gained through listening, though apparently
at first disconnected and unclassified, has fitted
into my work like the stray pieces of a puzzle, and
has proved eminently useful. Wherever I am I always
keep my ears well open.”

With such views as he thus entertained, life was always
enormously interesting to Dr. Dean—­he found
nothing tiresome, not even the conversation of the
type known as Noodle. The Noodle was as curious
a specimen of nature to him as the emu or the crocodile.
And as he turned up his intellectual little physiognomy
to the deep, warm Egyptian sky and inhaled the air
sniffingly, as though it were a monster scent-bottle
just uncorked for his special gratification, he smiled
as he observed Muriel Chetwynd Lyle standing entirely
alone at the end of the terrace, attired as a “Boulogne
fish-wife,” and looking daggers after the hastily-retreating
figure of a “White Hussar,”—­no
other than Ross Courtney.

“How extremely droll a ‘Boulogne fish-wife’
looks in Egypt,” commented the Doctor to his
inward self. “Remarkable! The incongruity
is peculiarly typical of the Chetwynd Lyles. The
costume of the young woman is like the knighthood of
her father,—­ droll, droll, very droll!”
Aloud he said—­“Why are you not dancing,
Miss Muriel?”

“Oh, I don’t know—­I’m
tired,” she said, petulantly. “Besides,
all the men are after that Ziska woman,—­they
seem to have lost their heads about her!”

“Ah!” and Dr. Dean rubbed his hands.
“Yes—­possibly! Well, she is
certainly very beautiful.”

“I cannot see it!” and Muriel Chetwynd
Lyle flushed with the inward rage which could not
be spoken. “It’s the way she dresses
more than her looks. Nobody knows who she is—­but
they do not seem to care about that. They are
all raving like lunatics over her, and that man—­that
artist who arrived here to-day, Armand Gervase,—­seems
the maddest of the lot. Haven’t you noticed
how often he has danced with her?”